Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Browse the Knowledge Base!

Can computers learn to read? We think so. "Read the Web" is a research project that attempts to create a computer system that learns over time to read the web. Since January 2010, our computer system called NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day:

• First, it attempts to "read," or extract facts from text found in hundreds of millions of web pages (e.g., playsInstrument(George_Harrison, guitar)).
• Second, it attempts to improve its reading competence, so that tomorrow it can extract more facts from the web, more accurately.

So far, NELL has accumulated over 50 million candidate beliefs by reading the web, and it is considering these at different levels of confidence. NELL has high confidence in 2,810,379 of these beliefs — these are displayed on this website. It is not perfect, but NELL is learning. You can track NELL's progress below or @cmunell on Twitter, browse and download its knowledge base, read more about our technical approach, or join the discussion group.

Recently-Learned Facts

instance	iteration	date learned	confidence
peter_mahovlich coaches a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
childcare_magazines is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
west_mineral_kansas is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
flake_graphite is a refinery product	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
mary_jane_williams is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rudy_seanez plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wood_prarie_farm is a farm in the state or province maine	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at n1959_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tampa_bay_devil_rays is a subpart of mlb	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
liver is a subpart of the body within function	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9